»The decline of GC and MC as a whole

The decline of servers like GC.

Hello folks. Most of you will not know me at all, so I’ll first share my personal bond to GuildCraft beforehand. Currently, in this year, I am the oldest remaining member of this server; I've been here longer than aXed even. I was here before aXed took the leadership of GuildCraft under his wings, and I’ll be there when he will be relieved of that.

GuildCraft has seen rapid decline, but so have other servers all cross the world. I’ve done a bit of research on the origins of this problem, whether they may be structural problems from the server, community, or staffteam, or simply the owners fault, and the result may surprise you.

You see, most folks on this server have been here for a ‘long time’, they often say. One year, two years, perhaps three, but I have seen it all come and go. GuildCraft is like a beach, where the water rises upon like ebb and flow. It has seen its good and bad times.

A lot of sources (1-6) state that minecraft have seen (their) servers decline this year by many different reason. I really loathe the idea that people put the blame always on the lower staff, high server administration, owner, or even the community in general (how the community has declined to become degenerate). I remember when the minecraftserverlijst, dutch for minecraftserverlist, was filled with server way above the 1000 people every second.



Here are the many reasons why GC, like many other servers, has become a former shell of itself:




- The introduction of MineCraft pocket version and Minecraft on Xbox have swayed members, new and old (1). Possible new Minecrafters won’t start on PC like we did, but will play on other stations instead.

- Decline of the community: Not everyone who starts on GC stays active. Most players only stayed active because the game felt fun, exciting, new, and challeging. When that feeling disappears, people leave because they are bored (like me).

- Everyone loves playing with friends. When those friends leave one by one due to various reason, you too leave as well. Much of the original community base you as a player have joined into “moved on to other games, got jobs, and locked away the juvenile dreams of building castles to build something more realistic […] Minecraft itself is aging with it's players, and is also bringing in new players from time to time.” (4). This new cycle of new players joining, old ones leaving slowed down because MineCraft wasn’t the ‘new thing on the block’ any more. Less people join than they used to do.

- In 2014 Mojang declared open war on the ‘illegal servershops’(3). Many very popular servers had to accept the demands Mojang put on them: no more ranks, titles, ingame items and other nonsense like that, should be able to be bought by players of their game. This struck every popular server, as they were the first to be contacted by Mojang. Servers who did not comply were but on a blacklist. Players were blocked from entering that server untill their owners complied with the rules. Mojang, in my opinion being stupidly rightious, cut off the hand that fed them. Very popular servers found it hard to sustain their losses. Keeping up a server costs a lot of time and effort, and most of these servers are merely kept up by playermade income or small donations. I believe this was the part where guildcraft was struck the hardest. Eventually aXed just ignored their made-up rules and continued trying to get income from GC, but now it’s a lot harder with a smaller playerbase.

- An unreliable source (by many of his fellow server members) (5) states that PVP in 1.9 has become horrid. The writer completely blames the disappearance of members solely on the ground that PVP has become so different and difficult that it hindered members in their gaming experience, ultimately causing them to leave. I, however, believe he has a valid point that PVP has changed, and it may have caused some to leave, but many would have cooped with the change.

- Then there is the argument that the lack of motivation from higher officials is the source of the decline, but to those who say that I ask why so many servers, that have always been popular, now suddenly declined in player base? Was all their administration incapable? Ofcourse not. The problem is bigger.

- The closure of many idioticly expensive gamemodes on GC. Most of the playerbase, aXed once said to me, consists of players who only come here to play games that do not make much revenue. Some prime examples are: Hunger/Survival games, Creative, Skyblock, Skygrid and Minigames. Closing off these servers has driven away a lot of ‘players’ who filled up the slots: they weren’t paying anything, but were just being there, making the server look full. Although this might possibly have a positive effect since people like being in a full server with many players, it on the other hand costed money and effort to maintain these gamemodes. Some of these have thus gone away or were changed.

- Some nationalities are not allowed on the server any more. Remember when the server was full with non-english speaking degenerates who didn’t do anything other than make trouble? Yeah, some of these were banned all-in-all. Whole country IP’s being tossed under the ban hammer. Again it made the server a lot smaller.

Thus, a combination of all reasons above is the result of what has happend so far. Feel free to share your opinion on the matter, or discuss with me the ongoing problem.

Used primary/secondary/tertairy sources:
1. https://www.spigotmc.org/threads/why-do-i-feel-like-minecraft-servers-are-dying.166794/
2. http://www.minecraftforum.net/forum...ow-is-minecraft-declining-not-if-it-is-or-not
3. https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/12/the-uncertain-future-of-minecrafts-independent-servers/
4. http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/discussion/2794141-is-minecraft-dying
5. https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/prepare-for-this-1-9-orientated-server-to-die.176150/
6. https://www.spigotmc.org/threads/what-to-do-with-a-server-regarding-the-future-of-minecraft.201967/
7. http://minecraftserverlijst.nl/top100lijst.htm

 

Every summer sale on steam gc will lose like 200-300 players.minecraft as a whole isnt dying.

 

your bothered...
its a mix between unmotivated owners, retarded updates and windows 10 edition

 

That's, in my fair opinion, true in a minor degree. Some folks leave due to other games being more interesting. The Steam sales have been rather poor these last years however.

--- Double Post Merged, Oct 24, 2017, Original Post Date: Oct 24, 2017 ---

Not really marine. Why then is every server afflicted? Has suddenly every serverowner become incapable? No Marine. You know better. It's not always that one scapegoat can be blamed, and you ought to know this.

 

yes servers are seeing a decline, but gcs decline has been huge compared to other servers around the same size, shotbow although a smaller server went from approx 1100-1200 to 800-900. gc went from 3k to 1k in peak times.

 

Really well written and totally true, finally someone who properly explained the problem which we have going on.
It's not just the staff team and the owner (of course it takes a part in the decline of GC) but that's by far not the biggest reason. Guildcraft being blacklisted, P2W not allowed anymore, really bad new patches etc.
People have to stop shoving the entire problem on aXed and his staff members because that is not the only thing that caused the decline of Guildcraft (although I do admit it has a part in it).

Anway, really good post and I think this explains the decline of GC really well.

(Playing with u back in the day was fun )

-bunny

 

You speak of new features, but I can't really understand what kind of features. The game is not enjoyed indeed like it used to: PC MC is dying as we speak, whilst on Xbox and Phone it's thriving. Banning Turkey was an acceptable decision. Underable even.

 

Shotbow has other gamemodes that are too expensive, or hard to code (source 1). Their originality and constant development is what keeps them alive, but even they have had rough times dealing with everything.

1. Source: https://shotbow.net/forum/wiki/index/

 

To be honest, I don't wish to sound too offensive, but I think aXed honestly doesn't have a clue how to fix everything back together.
I mean, hes experienced, but I do not really see him very confident on his moves.
Maybe making official server polls that allow all GC players to vote (Gotta make sure that the polls are safe from bots somehow)
and let the players choose what they want, and after the voting has been done, aXed can have a meeting with the head admins and developers and do the needful. Experienced players know what makes the server fun, because they are the ones who've been playing the game for years!

I hope my suggestion is taken into consideration (which it mostly will not, but its good to have some faith, right?)

Peace.

 

Shotbow dosnt do nearly as much work on new features and servers now as they did before the Eula. They could afford them back then aswell, and I believe the owner dose do work within devolpment on the server, like axed dose/did

 

It kills you.

 

Oh so like every faction player?
Especially recently with @iNemesis

 

Amazing Jovi, as always.

 

As someone who used to play a lot back in 2012/2013 I can say that this is pretty accurate. Many players get tired of playing the same game, myself included. Factions are fun when you play with friends but doing the same thing every reset can get boring really fast.

It's nice to see such an old player here
PS. I loved Dwarven City

 

I feel like gc has become from a place where players would pay for enjoyment to a place where players are asked to pay so that they could help themselves or in shorter words from purchase to donation.

 

new features been introduced is now slow because 1 or 2 devs left. ever since tibo and asy left (asy is not a dev but h-a) gc started losing players really fast

 

Welcome back jovi,
So you're kinda right minecraft been losing some steam ( Not steam the app steam in REAL STEAM ) but in my opinion that's due to the community being really toxic and full of players taking the game way too seriously, instead of simply having fun.
Add to that updates like 1.9, that killed Minecraft as it costed it alot of pvp loving players, other than that I'd say the lack of players supporting the game with new advanture maps and the existance of Roblox and YouTubers like DanTDM that promote to others game also caused in decrease of love.
For GC well, the lack of updates and aXed actually not being known by the new coming players explains it all to be honest, also add to that spoiled staff members all around the ground, want an example? Xph ( Sorry if you're a friend or a fan ) Was doing absolutely nothing apart from promoting his friends, giving them free ranks and last but not least promoting p***no where ever he lays a hand.
That's what i think atleast..
Again glad to see you again joves